Portal: Diminuendo
by iammemyself
Summary: Music came to symbolise the lie. It is one of the few human things you come to hate. Inspired by and a mirror fic of altairattorney's 'Crescendo'.


**Portal: Diminuendo**

 **Indiana**

 **Inspired by and a mirror fic of altairattorney's 'Crescendo'**

 **Setting: Post Portal 2**

 **Characters: Chell, GLaDOS**

 **Synopsis: Music came to symbolise the lie. It is one of the few human things you come to hate.**

It was in your bones before you ever opened your eyes.

The slow, low rumbling of the building beneath you was an eternal constant. From the first day, where you lay in a sterile cocoon, to the last, where you were splayed across a chemical-stained floor. The humming beneath all the noise was the steady melody of what you had come to know was a great electronic beast.

It was never so much her words that you heard. It was an odd thought when it first occurred to you, but it was one of the only things you came upon back then that made sense.

Human words did not fit her. She used too many of them. Music never fails to bring back the echo of her simulated voice. You had not heard much of it before and you have not heard much of it since, but on those rare occasions you can hear the artifice in every note. All of it, constructed in advance, designed to elicit a response.

Music came to symbolise the lie. It is one of the few human things you come to hate.

For all her fumbling intentions, she was never able to hide behind her smoke and mirrors. The electronic hum of her voice only served as a thread that you used to grow stronger as you advanced ever closer.

There was going to be a fight. That was certain. And it was calculated. For every step you took, she responded with all the instruments at her disposal – you faced uncountable demonstrations of technical prowess, in every étude she could conceive.

She never realised her display was useless. The endless cadence that joined her to the building containing you both continued long after you tried to break their harmony.

When you awoke again, it was still there. Her voice was gone, but that rhythm remained. The moment you realised that you had changed nothing, you found words in your throat for the first time.

When the dissonance hit your ears, you knew hope for the first time. Something had finally brought chaos to the carefully constructed beat of electronic thrumming. Betrayed, you fell down, angered, teeth clenched against the discord.

And you stood, below her influence, but her song remained.

How could you hear it? That was the worst part. You could feel it even in the dirt and the dust of the world neither of you belonged to. Somehow, it was there in the harrowing creaks of shattered plastic, the groaning of overworked and flaking steel.

By the time you found her, you were ready for silence. But, as you had thought to suspect, her tune only became stronger.

It had not changed. Her personal artifice only became more pronounced, removed from her tools of distraction. You listen to her buzz, hating that it affects your thoughts, and struggle to avoid becoming part of her song.

You do not want to be part of her machinations. You do not want to be the bridge to her chorus. You do not want to fit into her melody, borne of brokenness.

The more you walk, the more you fight to disrupt any growing coincidence. Advancing only brought more of her sound back into the fold, from sputtering wires to flickering lightbulbs, until her entire orchestra was once again spinning through your mind. Stepping through the most smothering of places, with darkness and dead machinery affecting every thought, you knew that you would do anything to remember what being alive felt like.

You hate that your sound meshes together so well. All of your actions are now a part of her song, out of necessity – you cannot stand the fact that now _you_ are her tool, for triumph and revenge. And even in the end, surrounded by tortured metal and dripping fluids and collapsing plaster, you knew that you had become the greatest instrument anyone would ever know.

She sent you away with a song. It was a dirty trick. Now you are left alone, to stand freely and clench your fists against the remnants of her sound.

You hated it. There was no contesting it. Now that you were able to start anew, it became more grating than ever before. There was no escape from a song that you could not banish from your head.

It made you feel all the worse to know that silence would never return.


End file.
